Biological and Physical Anthropology Commons^™

Evaluating Differential Nuclear Dna Yield Rates Among Human Bone Tissue Types: A Synchrotron Micro-Ct Approach, Janna Michelle Andronowski

Doctoral Dissertations

Molecular human identification has conventionally focused on DNA sampling from dense, weight-bearing cortical bone tissue from femora or tibiae. A comparison of skeletal elements from three contemporary individuals demonstrated that elements with high quantities of cancellous bone yielded nuclear DNA at the highest rates, suggesting that preferentially sampling cortical bone is suboptimal (Mundorff & Davoren, 2014). Despite these findings, the reason for the differential DNA yields between cortical and cancellous bone tissues remains unknown.

The primary goal of this research is to ascertain whether differences in bone microstructure can be used to explain differential nuclear DNA yield among bone tissue …